good morning. thank you for getting up everybody and coming to hear me, i really appreciate it. i'm here for a new book i will call "silent spring revolution" the origins of that book began when i was a boy because my mother and father were teachers and the one perk of being a teacher r is to get some extra summertime. we used our extra summertime as a family we went all over the united states visiting our national parks and seashores.

i got to go yosemite and the olympics and the eeverglades, w have a pontiac, station wagon a trailer, i grew up in northwest ohio in the midwest. we would go see the country. i had asthma as a boy and it was horrible. wherever i went i was so reinforced by putting up brochures but we used to do in those days in honor i would see that the place was saved by theodore roosevelt who also had asthma as a boy and would suffer mightily so i'd identified with tr 234 million acres of wild america, he created today's u.s. forest service. all these westerly national forests are theodore roosevelt.

he took a corrective 31 federal bird reservations with an executive fiat, they said birds were being slaughtered in florida because there was a father's warrant, anybody coming to hear me speak between let's say circa 1900 would have come this morning if you are a woman whether you think you whatever or not you would've come to hear a public lecture wearing a bonnet with an ornamental father in it because there was a father mafia and florida and they gone all the birds down at the rookeries and pluck the feathers and then also still bags. anall these species were dying. and nothing screams federal intervention more than certain environmental things. what good does it do for the audubon society of this is to say we are saving bird species because of progressive politics and a vigorous audubon society associate just laboratory birds to be shot willy-nilly and

slaughtered in florida. and the same with eric doesn't do good with air quality to say we are ohio and we have astringent air quality if i grew up in toledo the factor is ããblowing and dirt over the ohio kborder, there has to be federal air quality. and water quality on a river that goes through places and sewage treatments. none of this stuff came until the book i wrote. the point is, i wrote a book called " the wilderness warrior: theodore roosevelt and the crusade for america" the first wave of environmentalism, conservation, there are differences but brief purposes today. let's use the word environment. first, reform wave 1901ä909 the progressive era theodore roosevelt ããi wrote that book

and then i said there is one other thing, franklin d roosevelt did it too. and you guys of all her talks about theodore roosevelt or fdr but one thing to know about him, theodore roosevelt was went to harvard, fdr went to harvard, theodore roosevelt was a slight legislation fdr was state legislature in new york. theodore roosevelt as governor of new york, fdr was governor of new york. theodore roosevelt loved big navy that was his obsession fdr had a take up session with. theodore roosevelt said that conservation is the most boring thing, fdr said conservation is the most important thing. his first new deal act with the civilian conservation corps where anna on a plate american

got paid a dollar a day 3 billion trees across america because we drained all of our wetland we denuded all of our forest we had taken and created a dustbowl ecological disaster through the great plains west but i should also add theodore roosevelt had a nice named eleanor roosevelt and fdr married her. they are tight and when you deal with environmental conservation those two presidents are giants and i wrote two books on. that book here ir"silent spring revolution" is about the third wave. fdr created 800 state parks, 8 800. i could get into him isaving b bend national park on d-day which he did he had all the d-day maps of big bend where visitor stations will be our where the soldiers in normandy. it's not a game for the roosevelt environment conservation but the third wave

i didn't have a figure like that i didn't have a figure like fdr were wherever he filled out an application what is his job he would write tree farmer. he sold christmas trees out of his home he was born along the hudson river, set his life on the hudson and buried on the hudson and the leader of what today we call the scenic hudson river movement to protect that beautiful incredible waterway. i had a problem, where to begin, who to focus on in this book. ideally i wanted to begin in 1960, john f. kennedy running for president, new frontier, if you look at the democratic plank that year environments tucked in there pretty heavily, very firmly because there was a feeling that correct feeling that truman and eisenhower didn't do enough on the national resources or parks

environment it was all boom, boom, boom, postwar industrialization, build it build it and now kennedy was going to kind of be timeout. the great california photographer adams brought his book and 60 called this is the american earth. rachel carson who i will mention it in a minute was writing as a member of the frontier of john f. kennedy writing environmental plans for the democratic party being hosted by ethel kennedy, bobby kennedy's life. jackie kennedy posting her. i knew where i was ending the book because the third wave ended in 1973. not even a question. ended in 1973 with the triumph of the endangered species act passing the senate aero.2b when you hear about it being liberal, it was american. that same moment almost to the

week the endangered species was the big closing legislation of 73 we had the airborne or embargo. the error of gasoline prices energy independence. and a counter revolution that developed immediately to stop rachel carson is on, ralph nader is an ad environmentalism got too far and went so far and have begun a new dealer. i will mention why they thought that. out of that counter swing was born the american enterprise institute heritage foundation, coke brothers industry, ããthe federalist society. they are all coming to save money they don't like the federal government regulating

them. it's an anti-federal regulation movement that emerges up through the environmental movement i know i could have begun in 16 and got away with it i would've been disingenuous i would've done that to be a marketeer of books rare history began in the days after world war ii was he or she gets dropped we talk about it as victory over japan and the war has ended and we celebrate and i would've been in the street celebrating it. i never could criticize truman for his decision to drop the atomic bomb but i also never criticize a lot of people i write in my book that say what is this mean to the planet? the great doctor albert sweitzer won the nobel prize

and just written his doom. what if the nuclear g starts going around the world, oh my god! then john hirschi of the new yorker and other journalists started showing what radiation did to the people in japan. skin melting. horror shows what happens with an atomic bomb and it became antinuclear movement. but the antinuclear movement got fine tuned to being anti-nuclear testing. on one level policy people were american energy deciding how to stop other countries from getting nuclear bombs. great. there's a group of grassroots american citizens that became the first wave of the environment, met that said stop blowing nuclear weapons up in nevada. from 1945 to 1992 the united states detonated 1054 nuclear

tests. nevada, boom, boom, do you think people in nevada cared that i'm getting radiation? get your comic shaker on las vegas when you can see it's snowing radio fall out. people joining the atomic cocktails. the nuclear boogie-woogie. we are proud we were in a monopoly from 1945 to 1959 the only country in the world with nuclear weapons where it usa. then russia gets the bomb at its back and forth with arms race and meanwhile, we are testing, russia's testing and the planet suffers. out of that antinuclear group comes a very funny coalition, the biggest leader is william douglas dowho i write about in the book who became fdr supreme court justice 1937. douglas rushed to say no nagasaki after he saw what did in hiroshima for supreme court

justice said don't drop one in nagasaki justice would go climb the have a lands and become a buddhist. sprinkle job this ããall susan's hero is henry david. after the first work is dropped on joseph kennedy who gets a lot of bad press will be a business guy he wanted to get the pump involved and bishops involved, henry luce involved john f. kennedy red the war is over but he immediately took to our writer name norman cousins head of the saturday review. he wrote the first big major essay called his man obsolete? critical pretty mild but

nevertheless he was saying this is not something we should be celebrating is a big problem. kennedy loved it. jackie kennedy on a study like i have closely his career in the navy beyond legitimate pt 109 was much more helen keller catch 22 slaughterhouse kind a guy he saw and absurdity of war he saw and absurdity of how chain of command and he was skeptical of the whole nuclear aims yet he was army cold warrior. another was rachel carson. about nuclear testing. rachel carson was from pennsylvania, a girl growing up on the banks of the allegheny river and the allegheny river was a glue factory all around their. dirty air, dirty river, beautiful river and western pennsylvania. she would go pluck pinecones and write about nature in her

books. she put her first essay to get published in saint nicholas magazine. a magazine for kids. she talks about the natural world, the atmosphere and her teacher started recognizing in her, you have a gift for science and nature. and literature. she goes to a school called shot orhim in school for women pittsburgh and decides she wants to be an ocean only just order ocean science person and never seen an ocean. [laughter] she got a fellowship to woods hole massachusetts which is in walking distance from john f. kennedy's home in hyannis port and if you haven't heard about it, it was the place if you wanted to study marine life. today here in la jolla you have university of california san diego, the scripts i live in texas we have university of texas has the marine center at port aransas and the gulf of mexico university of miami is marine science but ã

ãwas where the intellectuals went it ulwas like the advanced institute in princeton where brainiacs go to study. you would go there to live call and find study natural seaworld she started studying the migratory patterns of eels. because a lot of people do birds but ããthere was no woman that did eels. they do have remarkable journey eels from africa all the way to the interior rivers of pennsylvania. she started writing columns for the baltimore sun she did advanced degree in zoology at johns hopkins she gets hired in world war ii to write marine radio scripts for radio about our shadow populations or clotted fish stocks and then some pieces about sea archers or ocean observations for radio. npr kind of thing.

by 1946 she's writing a series called conservation and action where 51 first federal bird reservations that theater roosevelt created our today's u.s. fish and wildlife service ããyou all here 550 national wildlife refuges. there all around you here. this is government at its best is protecting species protecting alisa says and sometimes we don't realize that this is a great gift we've got these wildlife refuges. she was writing the book to them like if you want to go visit sonny bono national library she would tell you what birds what's going on in that ecosystem, great stuff. she got two clues about world war ii being in government that worried her. one was the nuclear issue, the second bdt. the other big advancement

another thing that won the war is the bomb. bdt pesticides if you are young john f. kennedy or richard nixon or lyndon johnson, anybody on the pacific you would have been doused with ddt, spray host. and i would have too and he would have too. it killed lysa because mosquitoes, it kills tics. it's a miracle. it helps us ããfuture environmentalism very common or a genius for world war ii for a country the problem is, rachel carson and government working at u.s. fish and wildlife

particularly she knew ddt was toxic to fish and birds. she had read reams of data, documents, piled so she decided she was going to kinda be a whistleblower, wanted to go public with reader's digest and they rejected her. they said no way, why? ddt was big business. was bought by the u.s. department of agriculture, every state in the united states was being sprayed with pesticides. it was a big powerful lobby, the chemical industry is lobby and gas. so instead she wrote books. if none of you have read her c trilogy my favorite the sea around us but i love all three you ccan get them and a convenient library of america book 1 volume i highly recommend it. nobody writes about ocean

conservation, the world of the ocean with the grace notes of rachel carson as a literary person. in my mind as henry david and rachel carson. when you really get into how to write about a natural area her writing is much more ããlike two levels advanced the national geographic writing it's ofreally special. one of her big fans were the kennedy family they loved her books. especially rose kennedy. john f. kennedy's mother grew up in concord massachusetts, swimming, picnicking, and walden pond everyday. the kennedy kids do not learn to swim in the ocean they learn to swim and walden pond. did you realize that john f. kennedy's mother made a mission to russia to investigate whether the collective works within the libraries in russia? do you realize that her favorite book beyond law and essay walking by was a book called cape cod, all about the

outer cape. the other cape that her son john f. kennedy would sign as the cape cod national seashore in 1961. when i say national seashore's, when kennedy became president, we had one, kate hatters. hard ones on coastal areas. if i was president he said this many acres in alaska. it's mountain rock. i'm not criticizing that i'm simply saying for the politics of it, kennedy actually got through seashore public parks like cape cod like padre island texas like point reyes california. john f. kennedy seashores f

because kennedy had read rachel carson, rose is the fanatic. the books they love was the book under some book called cape cod. that book helped create cape cod national seashore that many decades after his death. in the mid-50s the government, but the report called our vendors and shorelines in that report said public beach is disappearing, doeverybody apartments hotels jersey ã dredging and we have no open public seashore lands for the public to enjoy. that movement kennedy seized on as is one big conservation. so you got the seashore conservation going in the 50s, early d60s, you've got the anti-bombs stop testing nevada people are getting sick. and ddt. out of the ddt group, a big ck thing happens a woman named

marjorie spock, how many of you here have ever heard of doctor benjamin spock. the baby doctor benjamin spock sister marjorie spock was an organic farmer. she had a vast part of suffolk county new york and is an organic farm. today there's whole foods on any corner of anyplace ago but she thought all the chemicals we are putting in our food was not good. they were blanket spraying ddt over her yproperty. she claim my right as an organic farmer has been taken away from the. constitutional right. leave me alone is my land. i want to grow organic produce. if any of you went to law school or had a grandkid in law school, it's a great idea. i had never thought, like what

do ei know enough about me how many feet do i have to go and i'm not in control? it's interesting. so i don't think ããit's made its way to the supreme court. like it should have. the supreme court they voted marjorie spock down. she lost. but william oh douglas wrote a dissent published in reader's digest and everywhere that's the birth of environmental law. he triggers the environmental movement with his descent. not only he got his lawyers to write a book about it but he was writing books called my wilderness. he wrote two books on my wilderness where he atrampled the country and in washington dc bob you are up there and others, the cnl can only meet the ããwilliam douglas hiked 186 miles they were going to

build a road there a highway. said it's a scenic cultural and history resource. emerged 186 miles because the washington post said build a highway. he wrote to come with me. if you hike with me you still want to build a highway, great but if you let me show you what you will destroy, to the post editors credit they went with him they didn't do e the whole 186 miles. they went with the justice to see and they said yes you've got to come up with something different. we don't want to destroy the cnl canal. today it's part of the national park service. no road. that's all douglas needed he became an environmental activist become a chuckle when i turn on the tv and hear abou clarence thomas are conflicts of interest .

bill douglas was walking conflict of interest. his office in the supreme court was the clearinghouse for anything environmental in the country before there was epl. the epo is not created in 1970, if you had an environmental problem here in rancho mirage or palm springs and you are getting plummets you might send a postcard to douglas. and he responded and he would say give me every document, every information you can. these green grassroots groups start sending douglas reams of their data about what's going on in local places. douglas kept hiking and hiking he hiked in kentucky to stop the dam and he won.he had with bobby and ethel kennedy along the olympic peninsula of

washington state and won. he went to a buffalo river and arkansas fall river where the protest was so big people are putting barbed wire across the river so canoes or kayakers would get entangled. there is shootings going on and bill douglas would careen down to buffalo. i didn't say he's a great supreme court justice. this is what his life was about. he didn't like lawyers or law clerks. is complicated. he was a believer. in a deep way. he showed the greens got guts, get out there, protest. and we can win. richard nixon saved the buffalo river from being damned. i can go on with douglas's stunts that all work. he doesn't have a failure on these things.brings so much media attention to it.

and he backs rachel carson who now after spock loses stock sends rachel carson his all over illegal information douglas sends every dirty document he could find on ddt chemical industries douglas writes a friend in m writing i' going to bend the law against the corporation in favor of the environment. bend the law against the 㦠[applause] that's got. using the doctor king is the only one protesting? doctor king on the nuclear test martin luther king jr. said over and over again, what good does it do to integrate the greenville lunch counter in greensboro lunch counter in north carolina what good is it due to milk your drink got ãã the fallout was going across

america hard rain rachel carson grabs all of her legal stuff and then she's got all of her whistleblowers at u.s. fish and wildlife research labs giving all their anti-ddt info. she sits down and writes in the late 50s silent spring and book comes out in 1962 it's one book revolution h with douglas spurring it on because in that book, first off, rachel carson had breast cancer while she was writing stit. she lost all of her hair, going to radiation treatments, she knew she would be dead soon and working against the clock to get her writing done. when it gets done in january 60 bill douglas says i will get the kennedys on board. bill douglas was really close to the kennedy family. i can't tell you how close.

he took bobby kennedy the attorney general hiking all in siberia to see siberia. hiked all over siberia. bobby kennedy, robert f kennedy. robert f kennedy and bill douglas were in siberia and ethel kennedy told me bobby got high fever like 104 in the middle of the outback of siberia sweating second, they couldn't find the penicillin or any medicine. douglas being a member of darwin put on his back and said you are sick this is where we part company's. and continues on his hike. ethel told me she wouldn't talk to bill douglas for about five years she was so pest that he left her husband in that state. bobby kennedy loved it he came back bill left me, macho.

the point is, douglas told rachel, you will be under attack but we got back. articles get published in the new yorker in june 1962, causes holy hell because the chemical industry is not just worry about getting rid of ddt they are seeing this is a trick to do hyper federal regulation on any chemical. and what are heyou dumping in reverse what is your chemical waste going. they have to take carson down the call her every name. and one event say then they are so ugly that it was intense. kennedy to his credit when asked by press he said i read ms. carson we are going to get to the results of miss carson's book and a panel together. he puts the top group panel mit

types. carson was right. the ddt wars come goes on for 10 years with big chemicals saying we can't lose this battle. rachel carson dies at 64 kennedy is dead and 63, the ddt battle doesn't and until 1972 and you know who's the one who abolished using ddt in the u.s.? richard nixon. is thirsty pa had ray marple's house stood up strong and told nxivm, you pointed me at epa, i looked at all this stuff and we can't use it anymore.

he didn't. after that the revolution pick sam and the big key for kennedy ããduring these years we get things like candyland national park created in utah, big battle for the north cascades in washington state national park, california was ground zero and my break on a lot of this stuff the battle of bodega bay i don't know how to care or think about nuclear power because it depends on my mood sometimes. but my understand the convocations of all that with anything nuclear but what shot it down really was the pacific your electric company pacific electric california electric company wanted to build the world's biggest atomic campus on at bodega bay california. on the san andreas fault.

[laughter] bonehead. could have found some of the other sites and decided to build it right on the ocean along where it would hit the fault line. the public went nuts. the sierra club went nuts but suddenly udall and everybody says no it's the victories of the third thwave winning. winning battles may be a setback in the supreme court but then they win and tenacious and come from all walks of life before i do away with kennedy let me tell you that kennedy one of the great ecological events in world history the nuclear test ban treaty you know how we stopped testing weapons in nevada because kennedy sent kennedy sent norman cousins this fringe writer who wrote when kennedy was military uniform nuclear weapons are a problem he says

sounds secret behind cia's, defenses backed norman cousins to meet the pope as a fig leaf where he's headed and then meet kirchoff stop is a third party diplomacy of extraordinary times cousins starts brokering a deal for nuclear test after the cuban missile crisis and kennedy erstarting with the gre speech of american university but in the summer of 63 said sign a deal with russia and britain no more atmospheric or underwater testing. russell today cannot blow up russia today cannot blow up i did allow it did allow underground testing that's another story. but the point is, kennedy did something in the foreign-policy cold war around that's meaningful and tense sorensen speechwriter said it's the greatest kennedy greatest achievement. now not going to the moon, he thought kennedy stopping the

testing of nuclear weapons was his greatest achievement. now lyndon johnson comes in and if you want to call new dealers or the bill douglas radicals or whatever you want to call them, they were worried about lyndon johnson because women have fought against the big seashore battle in texas lyndon johnson wanted to develop it with condos and hotels. they were suspicious of linden, on the other hand, he loved fdr and loved it are roosevelt and married lady bird. and from 63 to the end of his presidency he was a first rate conservation president problem with johnson is he thought of thought of conservation as america saving america the beautiful lyndon johnson for example signed the wild and scenic river act stopping beautiful rivers from being

damned today we all all these incredible scenic rivers if you go to the appalachian trail system are the pacific crest trail lyndon johnson. he did the wilderness act. the wilderness act if you look at a map you will see big parts of wilderness million acres were no roads were allowed to go. it was born in 1935 eleanor said bring pictures if you show franklin a beautiful landscape he will say save it she was so right. these guys brought all the dutiful pictures they wanted over a million acres with no roads nothing at the primitive wilderness in the sierras.

fdr looked at the picture and said oh my god because he loved it. this is early on and fdr ãã the thing is guys, i will never be able to see it. i'm in a wheelchair. how will i ever see all the sites you are showing? he said oh well and he signed it. that started the wilderness movement and by 64 lyndon johnson signs the wilderness act puts 9.1 million acres of america's no roads because brokering logging in electricity roads bring incursions ncfrom civilization. you can never get out of nature, there is something in the water that we did something flying overhead it's kind of frontier idealism but we do it and we've got pdid big purchas of it. johnson, lady bird, you almost

no wildfires, patient. she cannot care for the ããto have seen it roads without building was pacific coast highway. she went with stuart udall down the rio grande river in big bend she went white water rafting in the snake river in idaho. on and on. she is our conservation be vacation, she wanted to call it environmentalism and she said linden boys wouldn't let me. one of the word beautification she said i hated it sounds like a mortician or something she didn't like it but she got stuck with the term beautification because environmental buzzword. and ecology but they did good work is unfortunately among workers clouded we have celebrated linden on civil rights and headstart and npr

and he was a very good conservation president and she was an amazing vixen you might nixon ran in 1 do you realize that nixon hired john ehrlichman the prison for watergate most known was a land water lawyer from seattle and they would hire the firm and when he stepped he was in with

the environmental television turn color the nightly news and 67 this is january 69 nixon is not even in his office practically and the whole tv showing birds and the organization in santa barbara gets the oil out. the birds tapped in oil paradise the republican donors to mix in our nilived along the coast of california do something! nixon he had an interior secretary he told him the exact he said don't minimize it. don't tell people how bad it is

do not minimize because it's bad. say it's bad and will blame johnson. [laughter] so nixon did he camea on but he wasn't sure ayhow the environmentalism in the summer of 69 when he nis ready to celebrate neil armstrong on the moon nixon talking to the astronaut "time magazine" is putting cuyahoga river on fire in ohio. you take a match n.and it goesãb ãthis starts talking about how sicko rivers are. there is no epn. the senator from wisconsin of apostle islands national park they conceptualize earth day 1970. he goes and nelson comes up with the idea of teaching earth

day about the environment. i read all these books and after i read earth day books. the first of the holt country, offices everywhere. how does somebody november have no offices and in april has offices everywhere for earth day. follow the money. where did the money come from iraqi it's not bill douglas he always pretty portly comes from walter f united automobile

workers. which is going to lead us to where the fort wade is coming

with climate change. i will tell you, earth day nixon decides to split the difference he gets interior department staff the day off to teach people about earth he plants a tree on the white house with pat nixon a photo op. so he did lsomething, treeplanting.[laughter] and the fbi does the surveillance on the earth day headquarters and the protests. nixon says they are pinko commies. i'm worried this is a socialist plot and aimed to make me look bad. ehrlich man and ããand in one of the memos historians read other people's mail for a living. one of the tefunniest letters i ehrlichman and pete mccloskey out here in california for the republican moderate environmental congressman. they are good friends.

bill is not wearing bras. there is a little bit of switching going on under trees. there were dogs running. frisbee. he said the most benign surveillance report they've ever seen. but he tells mccloskey, i know you may find this funny but i've got to tell the boss this. i think third of the speeches on environment, summer of 70 create the environmental protection agency out of the white house with the help of l scoop jackson and john on the democratic side he is a bad ass

cop. the most honest elpublic servan i've ever encountered and i got to know the multistep. he got france elementary school in new orleans to comply. brothel houses are telling putting companies extraction agencies chemical industries you are not following the epa standards or need by. or the clean air act which nixon signs in waãby the time

nixon leaves the end of the revolution bipartisan in spirit had republicans nixon, ruggles house, a guy name russell tried republican side john salieri, republican congressman. frank church gaylord nelson and environmental senators supreme court justice douglas anti-new people like coretta scott king. doctor king, bobby kennedy was poster boy for wild and scenic rivers going around to resting with the kennedy family to save our rivers. dams which were unpopular became opular.

we feel like we are losing but we educated the planet we need planetary conservation action. we are not there yet but there will be a new one in california very well may be the leader fourth way because of their roles on getting fossil fuels no selling of fossil fuel cars by 2035. thank you all.

>> good evening.